


Calling the Shots

by QuillerQueen



Series: Love As the Moon Loves [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, OQ Happy Ending Week, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 23:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15254229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillerQueen/pseuds/QuillerQueen
Summary: The seeds of a potential epidemic are sown in the Dark Palace, trapping its inhabitants inside for weeks. A momentous occasion is missed, but not the opportunities that come with it.





	Calling the Shots

**Author's Note:**

> Roland is still a child here even though Robyn is her canon S7 age because the S7 timeline is, frankly, ridiculous, and I couldn't be bothered with it.

The marble halls smell of feverfew and mint, the chambers of ginger and sweat.

It started in the nursery and spread like wildfire through the castle. 

The entire first floor, with its freshly furnished classrooms and bright, spacious bedrooms teeming with orphans aged from teens to toddlers, plus a new baby to boot, was in a flare of panic when, on the fourth day of his supposed cold, Oliver developed an angry red rash.

Regina immediately had the castle put on lockdown to prevent the spread of the wretched illness outside its walls, and sequestered herself in the infirmary to tend to the boy with increased fervour. Three nights later, when Oliver’s fever finally broke, the baby girl’s cries took on a peculiar, agonised quality, and by the time her teenage mother appeared in the door with a despondent, heartbroken look, Regina had her potion kit ready and Robin stationed in her stead at the recovering patient’s bedside as she herself moved into the nursery, changing wet compresses every few minutes and wondering how much longer her micro naps would stretch.

The virus raged among the children and some of the kitchen staff for weeks, until finally the last of the rashes disappeared, and by the third blotch-free day, everyone was ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

Except that night, as Regina lay with her back pressed to his front, Robin’s chest rattled with a dry cough they both knew all too well by then.

He’d never been vaccinated. The Enchanted Forest didn’t have any of that available, neither this nor the Wish Realm version he’d come from. But surely he had to be immune? He'd been around the children day and night after all, coaxing liquids into them and distracting them with all manner of jest while he administered the loathsome cod liver oil. Surely he’d have been more cautious were he at risk?

“Robin?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve had measles before, right?”

“I can’t say I have, no.”

He sleeps with his nose buried in her hair, but not that night he didn’t, and by morning it was impossible to tell if his nose was redder or his eyes. She tried everything to prevent what was already far too far advanced, plying him with concoction after poultice after concoction, but that damnable rash still made an appearance a few days later.

Robin is burning up, and Regina’s eyes are burning, too. She’s not sick, thank goodness, thanks to the excellent healthcare she, unlike those who’d escaped the Dark Curse the first time around, enjoyed in Storybrooke. She’s not sick, and the pricking and stinging isn’t due to inflammation but exhaustion, and frustration, and fucking fear.

They’ve saved everyone so far, even the tiny newborn the charlatans of this realm would have given up on.

Statistically, Robin’s an overdue casualty waiting to happen.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she whispers, out of earshot, as she grinds elder flowers into a fine dust, squeezes juice from the berries, and brews gallons of tea she feeds him by the spoonful because that’s as much as gets down his closed-up throat.

The cloth over his forehead is practically steaming, his skin very nearly singing her lips as she presses a kiss there. He answers with a cough, like he has for days now, and when he cracks an eye open, she’s only half-relieved. There’s as much red now as there is blue, and it hurts even to look at.

“Drink,” she orders, and he obeys—or tries to, anyway. He manages half the mug before he’s turning his head away, dozing off again.

She fucking hates this godforsaken realm. She hates the golden chamberpots and the bumpy carriage rides that take forever, and she hates life without the amenities and appliances that make living in the Land Without Magic so much more pleasant. And what she hates the most is the lack of proper healthcare that has thrown them back centuries, bringing back the grim reality of epidemics easily preventable by vaccines she just doesn’t have the means of recreating.

Not for lack of trying, either. She’s delved into tomes and rummaged through potion kits, experimented with obscure magical arts  and even tried to run simulations of scientific processes. All to no avail.

Her head is heavy, buzzing with too much thought and not enough focus, and especially with chronic sleep-deprivation.

Staring at the blotches all over Robin’s face and down his neck, she pulls back the sheets, tracing his naked torso where the raw redness has been spreading out. She’s tired, and there’s tea for days and poultices for weeks, and her own words echo from mere days before as she’d chastised Robin for not sleeping, and _what good are you to them like this?_ So she shuffles closer, climbing in with him, eyes closed already in sweet anticipation of a nap, in his arms even, after what feels like an eternity.

She expects his arms to close around her by instinct, the motion pure muscle memory by now, but that’s not what happens. He groans in protest, frowning and pulling away, eyes flickering open just long enough to pin her with a bloodshot stare accompanied with a rough:

“‘M bloody burning up!”

That’s...not unreasonable.

And if Regina sheds a tear or two at his delirious refusal, she'll blame her moment of weakness on sherr exhaustion.

Sleep won't come though, and it's early still—perhaps enough time for a bedtime story.

“Majesty!” cries Roland when he spies her from his blanket fort. He's healthy, thank goodness, and safe from harm because they—Regina and Other Robin—had enough presence of mind to secure all the vaccinations for him during his stay in Storybrooke.

“Welcome to my fortress,” Roland says proudly, adorably, scooting over to make room for her.

She's not come here to be comforted. But if the child is simply generous with his cuddles, who is she to resist? Even though she didn't, did _not_ , come here to have the bruise left by Robin's reaction kissed better by Roland.

One story becomes two, and the sky turns from steel to charcoal by the time she says goodnight, taking with her some of that infectious warmth Roland has a gift of bestowing upon the world around him.

Torches flicker along the walls leading to their chambers, making shadows twist and coil so vividly she mistakes him for one, too.

A pained groan gives him away.

“Robin! What the hell—You're supposed to be in bed, not wandering around on your own,” she scolds even as she rushes to his side, propping him up, encouraging him to lean against her. The fact that he does so without the slightest protest might be less of a choice and more of a necessity.

“I—" he pants, exertion cutting him off, but he’s stubborn, too damn stubborn for his own good. “I was harsh before. I apologise.”

He crawled from bed and through the chambers to come find her because he thought she needed an apology. Because hurt feelings and hurt pride tended to fester between them sometimes. While she appreciates the sentiment, it pains her that he might have woken up worried she’d bear him a grudge over this, now of all times.

“Let's just get you back to bed, okay?” she says, stroking back his matted hair.

“Lie with me?”

She does. She lays a hand over his chest, not quite gingerly but careful not to encroach upon him. He _is_ burning up after all. But he seems to have other ideas now, scrabbling to pull her close with a series of groans, helpless and frustrated. His forehead wrinkles when she tells him to turn around, facing away from her, and he only responds to her impatient nudging, tenser than ever. Regina can't help but smile as she wraps herself around him, spooning him from behind, and he responds with a surprised, content little sigh as he arches into her.

He's clutching her hand, toying with the ring on her finger, the golden band that matches his own.

“I’m with you,” she whispers. “Now listen to your queen and go back to sleep.”

“Never cared to listen to queens,” he slurs with a hint of his usual brazenness. “Jus’ my wife.”

* * *

The invitation arrives the day Robin’s fever finally abates. 

All the realms have been united, it says, and by the will of the people, Regina Mills is to be crowned queen.

Her other half is here. She can feel it, actually. A sense of rightness, of balance she didn't know she was missing.

And if her other half is here, then so is their son, and Henry will be in her life again. That's a missing piece she felt acutely, and will no more.

The coronation is the following day, and Robin at the very least is still contagious, so they've little choice but to miss the momentous occasion.

Regina sends a congratulatory letter by raven, and invites the old and new queen to their abode. She responds by appearing out of thin air within the day. With her come not one, not two, but three Henrys, and a very grown up Robyn eager to meet her brother. They bring cake, and chicken broth, and modern medicine—enough doses of vaccines to go around, and a safer future for all.

When some of the little ones sniff and shrink away from the menace of the needle, Robin takes it upon himself to learn to administer the shots, distracting them enough with feigned clumsiness to accomplish the task.

He's gruff and grouchy, a game their orphans know well, but underneath his heart is just as soft for children as her own—and perhaps in this moment, finally, he believes himself the good man she’s seen in him and not the failure he's feared himself to be deep down.

“You're happy,” the Good Queen tells her softly, affectionately, if with a somewhat wistful edge.

“We are,” she says, still incredulous but daring to believe it more each day. “And so, too, will you be.”


End file.
